When the Cove School opened in September, school officials thought construction on the new Corte Madera campus was done for a while — at least until work got started on a planned expansion.
That changed this week, when flooding damaged the floors in six classrooms and displaced all of the school’s kindergarten and first-grade classes. Carpets were removed and drywall was cut out a foot up from the floor.
“It’s frustrating,” Larkspur-Corte Madera Superintendent Valerie Pitts said. “The goods news is we got a lot of people rallying to help us out.”
As word spread of the Wednesday flooding, superintendents from other school districts flocked to Cove, to help move desks, bookshelves and other materials out of the flooded classrooms. County Superintendent of Schools Mary Jane Burke was there, along with Kentfield’s Liz Schott, Ross’s Chi Kim and Reed’s Steve Herzog. Reed also sent over its custodial staff to help.
“We were deployed by Valerie to where we were needed,” Burke said.
One class has been temporarily relocated to the library. Another is in set up in the music room. Cove Principal Michelle Walker said about 40 children squeezed into the front office’s conference room Thursday morning for story time.
Students might be able to go back in the classrooms next week, though repairs are likely to take two or three weeks.
“We’ll take a lot of field trips between now and then,” Pitts said.
Pitts said she doesn’t know what the repairs will cost, but the district is covered by insurance. She said engineers had been summoned to investigate the cause of the flooding, which had something to do with drains backing up.
The school, which is on the east side of Highway 101, on Paradise Drive, sits less than 200 feet from marshland lining the bay. The combination of a 6.5-foot tide and the stormy weather caused flooding in the nearby neighborhood, but that was not what afflicted the campus, said Town Manager David Bracken.
“It’s a little bit of a puzzle why that happened,” Bracken said.
Bracken and public works director Kevin Kramer visited the campus on Thursday, to assess the situation. While the flooding issue is the school’s responsibility, Bracken said the town will provide assistance in solving the problem.
“We’re going to look into it,” Bracken said. “We’re going to work with the school’s architect and help out how we can.”
Flooding hit hard at another place called Cove — the Cove Shopping Center in Tiburon — where several proprietors were busy recovering Thursday from damage to their shops.
Dimitroff’s Frame Shop owner Tom Craig said he got to his store Wednesday morning, “and it was a disaster. I let out a pretty big wail.”
The wood floor, still covered with dirt in spots, and the lower 18 inches of the walls will have to be replaced, Craig said.
Champagne Salon & Day Spa began restoration Thursday morning by having the floors ripped out. Owner Maggie Champagne said the damage has caused the business to close for about a week, which is particularly bad timing.
“This is our busiest time of the year,” Champagne said. “But we’re going to open as soon as we can.”
